ABSTRACT
Some of the major changes in twentieth-century literature in English were determined by writers originating in the Caribbean: the Harlem Renaissance, the African American cultural boom, and black British literature. In spite of the turbulent social manifestations occurring in the archipelago, there have been authors who gradually turned to the beneficial aspects of cultural hybridity at a time when categories such as world literature and postmodernism were gaining momentum. Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott’s poetry is an excellent example. This chapter explores some of Derek Walcott’s major poetic works with the purpose of demarcating a series of salutary literary techniques used to harmoniously instrument diversity by juxtaposing conflicting histories and diverging worldviews. It points out how ethnic belonging is represented in his poetry, from tropes of nothingness to postethnic views, and engages in a dialogue with some of the previous critical analyses. It also shows how a composite poetic text can echo a continuum of ethno-racial identities, languages, and traditions, as well as a spectrum of cultural theories of the second half of the twentieth century.
